


3. expertise

by Phritzie



Series: Pale Blue Dots [1]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Alive!Linza, Do Ask Me to Move the Stove, F/F, Food Metaphors, I'm A Butch Not A Man, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Relationship, Runescape + Kinktober 2020, Situational / Rational Persecution Complex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26684845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: First prompt done of the Frankensteined-together list I'm working my way through, posted a little early. Linza adjusts to being, or rather not being, a part of Sliske's retinue.
Series: Pale Blue Dots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941913
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	3. expertise

Navigating a lifestyle within the confines of her new home had proved easier than she'd expected it to, and in some ways, that was worse. 

She'd anticipated games. Braced for trickery around each corner. But his stronghold wasn’t really mined with deadfalls or tripwires so much as it was empty. And what it did contain seemed far more preoccupied with getting under her guard than fulfilling plans of torment.

“So it’s just us down here?” she remembered blurting out. 

Linza’s second night of forever had come to an unremarkable close. Mostly not freaked out by this, she’d stared it down: an absurdly long run of carpentry, separating her from what was beginning to look like her sole companion.

If anything softened her punishment, it was Relomia. Not only did his favorite boguest need to eat, but she seemed to exact a certain pleasure from dining socially. Linza didn’t have to worry about choosing between starvation or gruel, and she had someone to talk to. Whenever he decided to break that illusion of peaceful boredom, Linza was convinced it would involve withdrawing her. 

Appearing almost comically miniature from her seat on the other side of the enormous dinner table, Relomia’s hand replaced her blackened silverware and disappeared below the tablecloth. When she spoke her teeth stressed the similar shape of both words in amusement. “Just us.” Tiny, smooth brows pressed down flat against her eyes. “Are you disappointed?”

Nervously inspecting the plate she’d emptied, Linza adjusted the napkin on her lap. “No. I’m—” _concerned that I haven’t seen any corpses, yet. A little freaked out by the glaring absence of dead bodies._ “Look. I’d just like to know what he wants.”

In retrospect, it’d been more like a wish than a question, which was fitting, because wishes didn’t deserve answers. 

“My regrets,” Relomia declared. “No one knows that.”

And then she’d asked if Linza wanted any more crab arancini. There was loads. Enough they had it for lunch the next day, in fact. Leftovers were a very common byproduct of mealtimes until Relomia perfected doubling her recipes.

 _Wouldn’t think it, looking at how they keep house._ Given the state of their affairs, and maybe some strategic underfeeding, she could’ve led her to believe they resided in total bankruptcy. 

The place was falling apart. Dozens of rooms were either bare or tightly secured against entry. Corridors that should’ve seen regular maintenance for all their importance to the compound’s layout were more often than not bisected by collapsing supports. An entire hall had been rendered useless in the earthquake, which had caused a vault in the main crypt to buckle dangerously. If the source of its backache wasn’t redirected soon it was going to go.

Linza’s first awkward foray into probing Relomia’s tractability on the neglect of everything came when a leak sprung up over her bed. She asked if they had firm plans for addressing water damage. Relomia assured her they possessed no such foresight. Her following request was met with so much enthusiasm that the second time her ceiling started to drip she didn’t ask before resealing the whole thing in swamp tar.

Quiet, necessary improvements — a loose flagstone filled in with a bit of clay here and there, a door long rusted shut removed completely. Weeks into directionless isolation underground, Relomia sheepishly served her a truly foul zuppa toscana, prompting an investigation of their kitchen pipes, and together they set to rights the crumbling elbow joint that’d turned their soup strange colors. Picking up a sledgehammer and laying into a pile of rubble to get that vestibule to the dead forge cleared out felt almost natural, after. 

Her world was hypotheticals at that point, so Linza whiled away the days, working on her prison and thinking. Say her future _was_ just this. _Just them_. Say he never returned, laundry list in hand.

Sitting around waiting to be useful _just wasn’t_ her style. Relomia was nice to her, and sort of smelled nice, too. Linza wouldn’t have waited until the slow march of wood rot buried her alive. Though the list, when it did come, granted her the knowledge and urgency to repair the specific walls that kept them from drowning in the Mort Myre Delta. Which hadn’t hurt, nor had getting a real map in order to better monitor them.

So what if she was impatient for some godforsaken, diabolical thing to stop waiting and _happen_ to her. Sometimes her companion was impatient with her as well. But she was no less open to collaboration for it. 

Linza gave her an unimpressed look as she allowed wheat flour to sluff from a baking pan like ash, turning and tilting it to evenly dust its square bottom. “Don’t you have... tinctures to check on, or something?”

“No.” 

Linza sighed. “Spices?”

Relomia sailed from the kitchen into the gaping cavern of their pantry and emerged moments later with a hinged jar of dry sage. Linza sniffed it to confirm it hadn’t gone off and then flicked a few pinches into the sauce beginning to steam on the stove. 

When Relomia finished cataloguing this development in the preparation of their dinner and returned to quietly scrutinizing her, Linza didn’t rise to it. She poked a precise spiral of holes into the dough until she felt satisfied with the uniformity of the lattice, rubbed it down with olive oil, and sprinkled on more of the sage. 

Unprompted, Relomia blew on the sauce until it was almost freezing cold. Once they'd used it to finish assembling the pizza, at her request, there was no accompanying supernatural fount of hellfire. The new oven needed testing. Linza got it burning in the traditional fashion.

She slid in their much-anticipated pie, watching the crust begin to bubble, and called over her shoulder, already after her about setting the table. 

A corner of the kitchen had been cleared out and a bench dragged in to close it up, replete with a single chair. They sat down together at the nook. Linza fussed with a bottle of wine that belonged in some beautiful chalet more than it did a necromancer’s tomb. Relomia’s patience waned audibly; she could hear her, sneaking tiny, wintery puffs. 

It was hard, not shredding the cork in those things, ancient as they were. As she turned to pour for Relomia, Linza was treated to the sight and sound of somebody’s will finally bending to their ravenous lusts. Her mouth was wide open, breathing carefully in and out around the scalding cheese threatening to wound her tongue.

If it weren’t for Linza’s own apprehensions, pulling her inexorably back from the lure of frank, aesthetic attraction into thoughts of _unsafe_ and _not human_ by Relomia’s corpse-like skin, or the gory cast of her blood red eyes, she would’ve considered her an unmatchable example of feminine beauty. Statuesque. Mysterious and slightly gaudy, in that way women were, when they wanted to drive other women crazy with wondering before it even got there.

Under that glowing, rended flesh were such artfully sculpted cheeks. Even shiny with grease, her lips would’ve been a privilege to touch. 

Relomia tucked a section of her swimming hair behind the fine point of an ear and grinned at her from around unspooling threads of mozzarella. “Id’sch good!”

Maybe… maybe more so. 

_Oh, who am I kidding._ Linza frowned and grabbed a slice of too-hot pizza. _They’re probably still very nice to kiss._

**Author's Note:**

> hey!  
> Just a quick update to say I removed the fizzy lifting drinks tag. At the time of posting this I wasn't in any way aware that Roald Dahl was antisemitic. My sincerest apologies for any pain or discomfort it caused. Jewish people deserve dignity and life.


End file.
